Music Molly

Getting Blurrrry at the Joanne Robertson show

Last year I listened to Joanne Robertson's Blurrr because Ryley Walker said it had the "most ill guitar playing [he's] heard all year." Then I started to see that reddish purple album cover selfie everywhere. Something about my existence as a music writer is that I do not ever start buzz...in fact I feel like I often catch buzz later than the average music writer. I'm not tapped in like that! And that's okay. I'm not a buzzmaker. I suppose I could start trying to do that, start making Reels with captions like THIS MIDWEST JANGLE POP BAND IS GOING TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE IN SIX MONTHS, GET IN BEFORE THE BELL RINGS, but it wouldn't feel true to me. It's okay, I still have plenty of people in my life who will ask me if I've heard of Wet Leg in 2026, and to them, I am buzzmistress.

Anyway, Blurrr was the talk of the music person town, Pitchfork Best New Music and what have you. I liked it, it was...well, it was blurrry. Ambient folk? Big washes of gnarled guitar, Robertson's ethereal voice coming in like a ray of light diffused through an old thick windowpane, you know what I mean...I liked it! And I got an invite to her show at Zebulon and thought, you know what, hell yes, I want to see what this is like live.

I went to the show with my friend Jackie, aka DJ Horse Jeans, whom I first met through the Indieheads podcast. The thing about having a podcast is that it can help you meet new people. That's why whenever I see the joke about how there should be tariffs on podcast equipment or whatever, I'm like, hmm yeah, but also podcasts are a great way to hang out with your friends and also make some new ones. And maybe everyone should have a podcast? Or at least everyone who enjoys yapping even a little bit. It was great to catch up with Jackie, we talked about the deranged calling/vocation of writing and talking about music, and she told me Billy Corgan thinks the CIA is responsible for rap taking over rock as the most popular genre.

I did my new post-pregnancy rock show thing which is - get this - Drinking One IPA. Having a baby obviously required a hiatus from drinking, and that went well (I missed cold cuts more than I missed alcohol) but something funny happened when returning to drinking and that's now that I like to have one drink but it needs to be an immersive and jolting experience, like a 4DX movie screening. As a contrarian, I now reject the post-millennial rejection of IPAs. Sometimes you need to drink a 7% beer that tastes like making out with an ancient coniferous tree.

The IPA was really hitting as we walked in for Joanne's set. It was packed in Zebulon, a sold-out show. There was no chance of wiggling in any further, which was fine with me. I'm 5'6", a lot of my live music viewing is bracketed by the presence of tall necks, shoulders, elbows, etc.. There was a really interesting tension in the room, a tension I hadn't experienced in quite some time—the high volume of people in there, all facing one single person who was going to play solo guitar and sing, created a lopsided and expectant energy field that was delicious.

Some things that happened as the show got started:

two women squeezed in ahead of us and immediately turned toward each other and started silently stroking each others' faces for a second before turning back toward the stage
everyone was DEAD SILENT for several songs, and no one had their phones in the air. extreme rarity in the concert zone these days
after a few songs, people started to pipe up. most of it was nice ("We love you!") and then one dude yelled "Bring out Dean Blunt!" (an occasional Joanne Robertson collaborator) and one of the face-touching women yelled "Shut up, dude!" in response

After this rock show pageantry, everyone settled down. Most importantly of all, Joanne Robertson was a captivating performer even though I couldn't see her. She sounded gorgeous, ethereal, otherworldly. I was hoping to get lost in the guitar strumming and boy did I. I was deep in the labyrinth, I had lost track of my breadcrumb trail entirely. How special to get to see a show like this! I am so lucky!

Okay THIS is interesting, I wondered if anyone posted any video from the show, so I just searched on YouTube for "joanne robertson live" and sorted by recent uploads, and there's this one, which features 20 minutes of recorded audio from the Zebulon show but no footage of it—rather, the music is laid beneath a bunch of camcorder footage of the video author (Noel Angot) wandering around NYC, hanging with buds, even watching said footage back through the "Lumetri Scopes" viewer on Premiere (#videographer things). It's beautiful, it makes all the sense in the world to have this detached but still meaningful view of the concert, filtered through the perspective of another. I ❤️ Internet.

And for a laugh here's a couple of pictures I took of the stage near the end of the show, just holding my digicam aloft and hoping for the best, and then coming up and blasting the exposure: